


But One Wolf Slaying

by Tanaqui



Category: Warrior Scarlet - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-01
Updated: 2016-06-01
Packaged: 2018-07-11 15:59:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7059493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tanaqui/pseuds/Tanaqui
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vortrix tries to puzzle out why he broke custom by coming between Drem and his wolf.</p>
            </blockquote>





	But One Wolf Slaying

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



> Thanks to my usual beta.

Vortrix's hands were busy with flaying the wolf, parting skin from flesh with neat, quick strokes of his knife, but his glance strayed again and again to the scar high on the wolf's shoulder, near the base of the neck. 

He had discovered it only when he had stretched the beast out in the shelter of the fore-porch, finding the mark with his fingers as he smoothed and settled the coarse hair. Curious, he had pressed back the stiff bristles to reveal a ridge of puckered flesh, the imprint of an old wound—and yet no more than a year old.

His heart had leaped into his throat at the sight. It might be that, along the downs, two such brindled dog-wolves had taken a like wound and then escaped the hunter who had dealt the blow—but surely it was not so. Surely here was the record of his own spear, a year gone.

A blow that, even now, he could not quite explain. He had known, as they all had known, that it was hateful in the sight of the gods to come between a boy and his wolf in his Wolf Slaying. Even as he had struck at the wolf—Drem's wolf—he had known. But he had always been unhandy with such things: treading in Midir's shadow; or interrupting his mother as she spoke the necessary charms over the salves she was mixing, so that she must begin again; or spilling the mead from the guest-cup set at the empty place at the Samhain feast as he reached for his own food. 

And he had known, from their first day in the Boy's House—nay, from before—that a world in which Drem did not somewhere breathe and walk and turn his face up to the sun would be one on which a wolf winter had placed its icy grip with no hope of thaw.

He and Drem had played together from childhood, of course, in the rough and tumble that is the way of boys, but Vortrix could remember clearly the first time he had noticed that Drem was different. It had been during their seventh summer: he and Drem, with half a dozen others, had been bathing in the stream, on a blazing day when the sky seemed to press down on them like a pale blue cap, the colour of the harebells that were now blooming on the sheep-cropped High Chalk above them. Someone had suggested going to visit Jago the potter, who could now and then be persuaded to part with a little clay for them to shape into horses and dogs, to be fired in the small spaces between the pots in the tight-packed kiln, and they had scrambled out of the water and back into their clothes and shoes. 

Looking back, wondering why Drem was lingering behind, Vortrix had watched with fascination as Drem finished carefully tying his shoes one-handed, holding one end of the lace between his teeth to draw it taut while his left hand worked and weaved the rest of the knot. Then Drem had sprung up, passing Vortrix with a laugh, and Vortrix had shaken himself out of his stupor.

"Did Drem hurt his arm in battle, like Talore the Hunter?" Vortrix had asked his mother later that day, as she sat before the loom, the clack of the weights providing a counterpoint to the soft thump of the beater forcing each new line of yarn tight against its neighbour. Vortrix had several times heard the story of the great fight that had taken place three summers before he was born, in which his father and Talore and other Men of the Tribe had driven away a strong force of cattle raiders. He could not quite see how Drem might have been involved, but he could not imagine any other way Drem could have hurt his arm.

"Na, baba. He was born like that," his mother had answered, in a matter-of-fact tone, twisting the shuttle in and out, in and out, through the warp on the loom. "A bad business, that. Oh, for the heaven's sake, child, don't block the light!"

And Vortrix, yet again somehow in the wrong place at the wrong time, had run off to go look for birds' nests along the woodshore, because he knew that if he could bring home a clutch or two of eggs, it would make his mother pleased with him again.

After that, he had watched Drem whenever they played or worked together, and seen how, even with only one good arm, Drem managed many things as well as Vortrix. Sometimes better, for there was no one constantly with their eye on Drem to see how well he did this or that thing, to see whether he was worthy of being the son of the Chieftain and, one day, Chieftain in his turn. Nobody seemed to expect anything of Drem—except perhaps Talore the Hunter.

For he had heard the full story at his father's hearth of how Drem had come by one of Fand's latest litter—and the best of the litter, at that. First in the loud complaints of Uncle Morvidd: how that fool Talore had sold away his best pup to a witless cripple—and for nothing more than a dead fowl that the boy had no doubt stumbled across in the marshes, already dead. Then, the following evening, after his father had smoothed Uncle Morvidd's ruffled feathers and sent him away, and summoned Talore to give his account, he had heard it from Talore himself.

Talore had leaned forward, showing his dog teeth in the firelight as he laughed. "Nay, it was no chance find. The boy brought down a swan as large as himself, and of a certainty with his own throw-spear. I saw the wound, and I have seen him learning to use that weapon with such skill that, at nine summers, he is more sure of a kill than many twice his age. And such a kill, in such a way, was the price we agreed on, and so...."

Vortrix's father had made a noise in the back of his throat and Talore had smiled again, his dark narrow gaze fixed on Vortrix's father. "Strength and courage and skill are all needful things for the Men's side. But the wit to see a way around when there is no straight path, and the will to see the thing through, and the faith to not only make but keep a bargain—my Chieftain knows these are all needful things for the Tribe."

And Vortrix's father had again made a noise in the back of his throat, but there was no more said of the matter, and soon it was no more remarked on to see Drem with Whitethroat trotting at his heels that it was to see Talore the Hunter with Fand.

Vortrix had gone on watching Drem even more closely after that, but in a new way: watching not just the things Drem did, or even how he managed them, with only the one hand, but his manner of doing them, of doing any task that was set before him or that he set his own mind to. With determination like a burnished blade; with a steady purpose like a well-twisted rope of flax holding a restless calf; with confidence like the rising of the sun.

Vortrix, who so often hesitated and fumbled, and so botched the tasks assigned to him, because he was afraid of failing and of disappointing his father—again—envied the way in which Drem flung himself headlong at the world, pushing always to be at the front or among the first. Envied, too, the grace with which Drem carried himself: tall and lithe and sure—not square and clumsy, like Vortrix—for all that he trailed one arm like a broken wing. 

And so it was that, even as Drem strove to be like the other boys—like Urian and Maelgan and Luga—Vortrix strove to be more like Drem. And when, on their first day in the Boys' House, the others began to taunt Drem— _Drem One-Arm!_ —Vortrix had, for a few breaths, hung back at first, and then thrown himself into the fray, as joyful and unafraid as Drem.

And after they had fought shoulder to shoulder, after Drem's blood had mingled with his, willed by the gods but not unwelcome, Vortrix had time to think that a boy who would one day be Chieftain would do well to have a boy like Drem as a friend.

So it was that, when Drem met his wolf, Vortrix had not hesitated, as he had hesitated so many times in his life. Instead, he had followed the pattern set for him by Drem in the years they had been friends and stepped forward swiftly to make the spear-thrust that would let Drem still breathe and walk and turn his face up to the sun. Vortrix had given no thought in that moment to what would come after, to what it would mean to come between Drem and his wolf. 

What it meant had been bitter on the tongue and in the heart—but the Shining One and the other gods of the Tribe must have meant it to be so, just as they had arranged for Vortrix and Drem to become blood-brothers on their first day in the Boy's House. For, while there could only be one Wolf Slaying, only ever one, now Drem's wolf was come again. The proof of it was clear to see, in the old scar beside the new wounds on the brindled dog-wolf's hide.

Drem had slain his own wolf after all.

Slowly and carefully, Vortrix finished flaying the wolf—Drem's wolf—and cleaned his tools and dragged the flayed carcass outside for the dogs to worry. Then, taking wolfskin and courage in both hands, he went inside. "Look, my Chieftain father...."


End file.
